"Wassup? I’m Becky, and I am a third-year Computer Science major at UT Austin, minoring in Business. I love food. Besides spending most of my time doing homework and coding assignments, I genuinely enjoy cooking for my friends and eating delicious food together. Food is an essential part of my everyday life; I can't seem to stop thinking about it. In fact, it breaks my heart the most to see food go to waste. It hits too close to home when I work at the Aramark Union Catering and have to throw away all the leftover food from the events. I was fortunate to have found a team of four amazing young women who share the same passion and values to go on a journey to tackle the problem of food waste. We targeted a point in the supply chain where we can make the most difference: grocery stores. Despite well established donation and compost systems, up to 21 billion pounds of food is still being wasted at the grocer level every year. Thus, we decided to combine our knowledge of tech and our passion for food to reduce the number of unsold perishable items at grocery stores from going to waste. After talking to over 45 people including floor employees, senior level directors and industry experts, we pivoted to focus on a 3-part solution: Throw-A-Weigh. It has a customizable hardware that captures the culled produce information, a software that expands the dataset with attributes and analyzes it for trends, and data reports that are presented to produce managers. I had so much fun working with my team this past semester that we decided to continue working on this project to pursue a possible startup opportunity. Work is not work when you enjoy what you’re doing, and that is exactly what it felt like when I was working with #SortSquad on the Throw-A-Weigh. Nothing can stop a team of passionate gals working towards a common goal."
-Becky Xu, 3rd Year, Computer Science Major
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